Tag: FOMC

Quite Possibly the Most Offensive Christmas Song Ever

Don’t play it if you don’t have a sense of humor. Don’t play it if you don’t want to hear “bad words.” You probably shouldn’t play it at work.

 

In Closing: the choice to fail; the majority of Americans want common sense; tweeting pope; and you thought American banks were bad; on the economy; explaining Iceland; let me save you some reading; NDAA sucks and the new version is no better; “And when a story has enough obvious holes in it that small children roll their eyes, its literal truth is going to be a tough sell”; all the econo-talk you can stand in one place; on Grover Norquist; avoiding the cliff; and the smartest thing I ever read about small business taxes is “My company and my competitors never made a decision based on taxes.  They made decisions incorporating what the tax structure is because we can’t change it.”

Just a few items on the economy

So let’s just start with Robert Reich, pointing out the disconnect between Washington and the economy.

The economy, by the way, is in lousy shape. It’s just that between inflation reporting that automatically inflate GDP and corporations raking in record profits, it’s easy to pretend that things like anemic jobs numbers, people leaving the workforce, dropping housing prices, declining wages, high fuel prices, and all the other things that effect those of us in the trenches don’t matter.

But here’s an odd glimmer of hope. One Fed official thinks it’s time to start raising interest rates. His reasoning is that it will encourage saving. Traditionalists should be ripping their hair out yelling about how it will kill the “recovery” (you know, the one we aren’t really having) by making it harder for businesses to borrow money (you know, the money banks aren’t really lending).

Some of those traditionalists might stop for a moment to consider that it would also stifle inflation (the inflation the feds have been trying to pretend hasn’t existed since the Clinton Administration). None of them will point out that it will make it more attractive for everyone to own bits of the national debt (the debt that Congress is arguing about). It is too much to hope that anyone other than myself is beginning to question whether super-low interest rates actually do much for the economy.

 

In Closing: porn; abortion; blast from the past; War on Drugs; humiliation; security; and cats.